Chapter 4
One week later
Kelcie pretended to be all engrossed in her phone as we rode in the back of the chauffeur-driven sedan.
“Stop pretending to be booked and busy and tell me where you’re taking me,” I said finally.
She’d picked me up from my condo in the South Loop area of the city and now we were weaving in and out of traffic in the Gold Coast area.
She sighed. “Jaxxon wants to spoil you a little . . . as I said he would,” she added with a smack of her full lips. “He wants you to feel courted?—”
“That man’s been courting me since 1967,” I joked.
“Facts! Right?” She laughed. “Anyway, he wants to court you. So, he’s sending you for a day of relaxation.”
“Where is this day of relaxation taking place?”
“The Excelsior Grand.”
“Ooh, fancy,” I commented.
“Yes,” she agreed. “And while I have you here, we need to talk about this wedding.”
“What about it?”
“What is your vision, Skyy?”
I was quiet for a moment as I considered. “Well, my most prominent vision is to hire an event designer.”
“You’re the player liaison. I’m sure you know the best event designers in Chicago.”
“And do. I already reached out to British Goode. I told her I want the shotgun wedding special.”
Kelcie laughed. “So now she thinks you’re pregnant and trying to tie the knot before the baby comes?”
“Nah. She knows I’m trying to do this before training camp starts.”
“Training camp starts in four weeks.”
“I know. That gives her three weeks, because I need time to honeymoon.” I wiggled my eyebrows comically.
“You’re probably gonna need some time for recovery, too. As long as Jaxxon’s been waiting to get his hands on you, . . . he’s about to eat your ass off the bone.”
It was my turn to laugh.
We were greeted at the reception desk of the hotel’s spa by a hostess, who personally escorted us to the changing rooms. Once we’d placed our personal items in the provided lockers and changed into the spa-provided camel-colored robes, she escorted us to a sitting room.
The room had a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on Lake Michigan.
The sun was low over the horizon because it was late afternoon.
The view definitely added to the relaxing vibes of the establishment.
Kelcie took a sip from her complimentary flute of champagne.
I checked an incoming text message on my phone. “Hmm, Jay just sent me a text.”
“What does it say?” She took another sip.
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay. You better slow down, pretty momma. You’re gonna be on the massage table fast asleep, if you keep drinking.”
“Girl, I’m gonna be on that massage table fast asleep regardless. I’m exhausted.”
“He’s sending us to a club called Lemon Rain .”
“Uhm, sounds like a drink.”
I smirked. “It’s a sex club, . . . a fetish club.”
“Ohh. Okay.”
“One of the players told him about it. He thinks it might be a resource for me. You know, if a player is looking for someplace to work out their . . . kinks,” I joked with absolutely no judgment.
Sex provided different things for different people. What it provided and how people got those needs met was none of my business, as long as it didn’t include kids or trafficked women.
“So, we’re going to . . .”
“Observe. One of the ambassadors is going to give us a tour.”
She squirmed and wiggled in her seat. “I’m excited. I know this won’t surprise you, but I’m very vanilla in my sex life.”
“Same.”
“But I’m open to exploring . . . more.”
I winked at her while taking a gulp of my champagne. “Same!”
I didn’t tell her that Jaxxon confided in me back in college, when he started dabbling in domination.
I shivered slightly at the thought of him dominating me.
I knew it would require hella trust on my part, to let myself go enough to submit.
But if I would submit to anybody, especially in the bedroom, that person would be Jaxxon.
When I arrived at the home we would eventually share, Jaxxon met me at the door with open arms. I leaned into his embrace.
“Hey.” I stood on tiptoes to kiss his lips, because my five feet and three inches were no match for his six feet and four inches.
He returned the kiss, then pulled me into the foyer. “Hey.” His hands skirted my body, following the curves of my physique until his hands landed at my waistline.
“Thank you for today.” I pecked his lips once more, before removing myself. I took off my shoes, placed them on the shoe rack inside the large front closet, and padded down the hallway toward the kitchen.
Jaxxon followed, hot on my heels.
“Did you eat?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “The chef, Genesis, she came by and cooked. Ay, thanks for setting that up for me. She made grilled halibut, brown rice, and some type of salad with strawberries and, I think, almonds. It was good as hell, too.”
I grinned. “Yeah, the athletes love Genesis Cole-Upton’s cooking.
Apparently, she started cooking really young to keep her older brother fed and energized through his high school and AAU careers.
Now, he’s in the professional basketball league, and she’s cooking for him and most of his teammates.
Every player on my roster that wants a personal chef wants Genesis Upton.
” I grabbed a glass from the cabinet, filled it with ice at the refrigerator, then filled it with water. I took a large swallow.
“The massage was good?”
“The massage was excellent.” I let my eyes roll up in my head, and we both laughed.
“Did you get a chance to stop by the club?”
“We did. I think Kelcie’s getting Travis pregnant tonight.”
We both laughed again.
“Oh yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I bugged my eyes at him. “You know watching is a turn-on.”
“What did y’all watch?”
“Well, we started off in the bar area, of course. The . . . ambassador that showed us around, Kemma, she got us drinks first. I guess to loosen us up for the experience. I’ve never been inside a .
. . fetish club. I don’t know. I expected a lot of black and red leather.
I expected it to look, I don’t know, seedy. It wasn’t like that.”
“You thought I would suggest someplace seedy for your clients?”
“Nah. Not at all. I just didn’t have any frame of reference, so I guess I was thinking about something from television or a movie.
It was very . . . upscale. I mean, there was a lot of black, but there was charcoal grays and shades of blue.
It was inviting.” I took another drink from my glass of water.
“Once we moved away from the bar, Kemma showed us the other areas. We saw a little bit of everything.”
“What makes you think Travis is getting pregnant tonight?”
I laughed before responding. “Kelcie couldn’t take her eyes off this one couple having sex.
We really weren’t supposed to have our phones, but for the purposes of the tour, Kemma didn’t make us leave them in one of the safes.
Kelcie was on that thing calling Travis and telling him what was up before we had even seen one third of the place.
She didn’t even ride home in the car you hired.
She had Travis pick her up. I bet he got head in the car.
” I mimicked Smokey from the movie Friday .
“I bet he did.” Jaxon chuckled, then turned a serious gaze on me.
“What about you, my love?” He crossed the room and joined me at the kitchen island.
The glass of water that was in my hand was soon on the countertop, as he cupped my chin and tilted my face up.
We were eye to eye. “What intrigued you?”
“Most of it. The thought of you . . . dominating me.”
He grinned and gently caressed my cheek. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a lot we need to discuss first,” he told me.
“What?” The disappointment was evident in my tone. “I gotta take classes before I can . . .” I looked him up and down. “Tap that?”
He laughed heartily. “Let me find out you got a little undercover freak.”
“Jay, I’ve been waiting since at least eleventh grade to sample that.”
He cracked up. “Shit, same. Eighth grade, actually.”
“Oh, this is pretty.” I patted my mouth as I yawned.
Before me were three tables, all round, set with mocked-up table setting samples for the wedding.
My wedding would be put together quickly, but that definitely didn’t mean it wouldn’t be elegant.
Jaxxon was a popular professional football player.
Photographs of our big day would eventually end up on social media.
I wanted the wedding to match Jaxxon’s fly, both professionally and personally.
I was proud to be his fiancée and would be proud to be his wife.
I wanted us to have a wedding that we would be proud of.
I had given British Goode, the event designer, very few directives, but one thing I had stressed was that the wedding would be elegant. Small, but cosmopolitan and classy.
The venue had been secured. It was a mansion on the water, just north of the city.
Chicago in the summertime was a beautiful thing.
The vibe was filled with happy feelings.
The weather was gorgeous. The days were hot, and the sun was bright, but the late afternoons and evenings were perfect.
And I knew there would be a breeze off the lake.
Jaxxon and I would both have three attendants, and less than one hundred guests would receive an invitation to the exclusive event.
Top Flight Limited, Genesis Cole-Upton’s company, had been secured to do the food.
Brooklyn Waverly-Field, the seamstress extraordinaire, was custom making my dress.
Neo-soul songstress Allura was serenading me down the aisle.
We hired widely sought-after photographer Aaron Shields, to capture the moments, and my future father-in-law, Malcolm McKissick Senior, would facilitate the nuptials.
The big things had been taken care of; it was the small but important details that we needed to handle.
“Why are you so tired?” Kelcie questioned me in a whisper.